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A letter co-signed by 39 other agricultural and related organizations and sent to congressional leaders expresses “strong opposition to the more than $16 billion in cuts to the farm safety net proposed in President Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget.” The USA Rice Federation developed and coordinated the budget letter.

The organizations sent the detailed letter to House and Senate budget and agriculture committee chairmen and ranking Republicans.

U.S. producers are struggling to understand and comply with confusing, costly and burdensome payment and eligibility rule changes that far exceed what the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (farm bill) required, the Congress intended, and producers anticipated.

The “cuts … threaten, once again, to change the rules midstream on American farm and ranch families,” the letter said.

The letter’s signatories said the proposed spending reductions would “strike at the economic heart” of full-time farm families of all sizes “in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression … [and] at a time when net farm income is projected to be down 20 percent.”

The proposals threaten “the viability of … family-owned farms and ranches,” which would further undermine the U.S. economy, the letter said.